Loeb Classical Library

The Times reports that Harvard University Press's Loeb Classical Library is going digital "on a fee basis."

What's the fee? The Times article doesn't say, though the HUP web site says pricing is "tiered by size of institution," and that the set is available to individuals for a fee of $195 for the first year and $65 "for subsequent consecutive years."

While the Times doesn't report the pricing, it does devote two sentences to the news that:

The 1914 edition of Suetonius's Lives of the Caesars, for example, declined to translate some of the bawdier passages, instead presenting the Latin text on both pages, in deference to the anti-obscenity laws of the time. Harvard University Press confirmed that the digital edition, like the current print edition, includes full translations of the dirty bits.

This may seem like a small point, but it's actually pretty telling. The Times coverage is directed not at people who might actually consider buying and reading the books, but at those who want to skim through it in search of "the dirty bits."

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